Rogues in early TLP - Should they be changed?

They should do it at least for rogue 2.0. It's the only melee 2.0 that's just straight up no brainer replaced by TSS. All others at least go in offhand or sidegrade to other options

Weapons don't actually drop in TSS.

FTFY

Maybe we were lucky back in the day, but Embershank was fairly common for us. Some other weapons like Sekv and Fleshmelter were rare, but attainable. Arcekor literally never dropped. I even go back and solo AGW and have yet to acquire it for my collection. I'm fairly positive it doesn't exist anymore.

My guild on Mangler had Arcekor drop the last 4 weeks in a row at the end of TSS, after 2 months of nothing. Weapons in general seemed pretty during TSS. A common joke on the server was that 1 Solteris clear was equal to a month of weapons in TSS (If not more).

We only had 2 Embershank's drop despite clearing AG:N for all of TSS and TBS.

Yeah, Solteris is really when they just started implementing more total weapons so it was quite the boon. TSS had maybe 1 non-priest/caster weapon available in a loot table. Solteris was easily double that. Just the last raid alone, two total chest and you had ball of sunlight, lance of solteris, blade of pure light, scimitar of the damned, orb of striking, dagger of insanity, pike of the vampire

Bringing 1hp ratios closer to 1hb/1hs/h2h of the same tier would go a long way to helping rogues prior to TSS, as would giving them the Strikethrough AA around the 65/70 stretch the same way Monks and Berserkers get it (as opposed to all the way in Underfoot as it is now). Rogues get penalized enough for when they can't stay on the mobs backside but they get double dip screwed from autoattacks getting eaten due to having ~45% less strikethrough than other martial classes during that era

you could simply add a passive AA that kicks in, about the time the monk passive dmg aa kicks in, that adds more damage to 1 hand pierce weapons in the MH only. would effect standard auto attacks and back stabs.. easy and simple

Buff rogues!

Rebalancing of really awful classic classes is pretty long overdue. I doubt anyone would object to giving paladins/rogues/druids/wizards/rangers/warrior some stuff they maybe just get later anyway. Like.... why can't the balancing bar just be placed at enchanter/cleric and make at least a small attempt to make everyone as close to similar value. Obviously this happens much later in the games cycle anyway ( after pop,) but like..... it just seems like something easy to do that would really improve the experience and the variety of classes played initially at launch.

Also, give bards mana regen in classic ffs lmao.

Like every TLP it's.... people generally play their best pick, then they roll a ranger/paladin for memes. That's literally the meta.

They need to stop giving more power, and start taking away some instead. Players are already ridiculously overpowered compared to content. Don't buff rogues... Revert some of the out of era boosts other classes have gotten instead.

Easiest fix would be to give them another 5 levels of piercing until Omens, wouldn't need to change any items.

@ L50 they get L55 mod
@ L60 they get L65 mod
@ L65 they get L70 mod
@ L70 they are still L70 mod

Only for piercing though.


The only reason I would do the above is because.
1. You don't have to touch items or AA's
2. You don't have to touch other classes
3. Seems easy

Players vote with their feet. Rogues are almost non-existant on TLP servers. This is the case because the rogue is underpowered compared to other classes.

Former EverQuest players who made World of Warcraft realized that SOE gimped the rogue class and they gave their rogues far more utility. The rogue in WoW is a fun class to play compared to the undewhelming rogue in EQ.

For starters, I believe that TLP rogues should get a special kind of kick ability that can do damage and interrupt spells. This ability would not be on the global cooldown and let them use backstab too. The ability to interrupt spells would make rogues more desirable in groups.

One more ability that WoW rogues have is Sap. This allowes rogues to incapitate humanoid mobs for one minute while they are sneaking. It's a form of crowd control.

Since Blizzard borrowed much from EverQuest, it's time to return the favor and borrow some rogue abilities from WoW. Thanks for listening.

I think if you make every class as bad as rogues are in classic... nobody would play classic since all those people are already on the "other" non sanctioned server anyway.

They could easily buff rogues and make them far more desirable in early expansions by just doing 2 small things.
#1 Make pickpocket use a separate loot table. Some people will try to say it does but (having mained a rogue at some point) I'm convinced it doesn't and it can hurt getting groups (even if you're not picking). If it already uses separate loot tables then make that public. Or just make the skill not work if the mob is in combat.
#2 Make the apply poison skill instant. Yes, it will be expensive for the rogue but this would allow them to actually use their nearly useless poisons in early expansions in clutch situations.

The first will help a ton with getting groups and the second will help a ton with dps in raids and clutch dps in groups. Again, it won't be cheap for the rogue but that's what makes it a non-overpowered change. A lot of rogues will use it in raids and as a side benefit it will be a nice plat dump.

A trivial bump would be to add +1 backstab damage to classic piercers. So that 13/30 is a 13/30 with a 14 backstab damage.

Difficulty here is defining "classic". A decent start could be a bulk update of all of the piercing weapons under 10dmg getting set to 10 points of backstab damage.

Is there a reason not to merely use the already existing innate melee damage AAs as a balancing mechanism? I feel like compared to literally any other change, it's about as simple as it gets.

Accuracy AAs, backstab miss rates, weapon itemization, and broken Monks are all cumulatively part of the problem. That said, it's nothing that can't be solved with an adjustment of a % based damage mechanic that already exists, and would probably take comparatively less effort to adjust.

Create a couple level 50/60 Rogues/Monks, and parse them against each other, tweaking the innate melee AAs for each until they seem appropriate. It probably wouldn't take as harsh of an adjustment as a lot of people think.

Burn the candle at both ends. Bump Rogues up 10-15%, and Monks down 10-15%. Monks will still probably be matching or exceeding Rogues on burns around GoD when they have their ideal burns (Speed Focus + FDF) up even if you artificially closed the gap between them by 30%.

I would really love to see a tiny bit of insight into what kind of environment/tools the devs have access to when it comes to testing stuff out. Creating some 50/60 characters and equipping them to parse with best in slot seems like something that shouldn't really monopolize too much time.

My first and only rogue was created on Aradune during early Kunark. I've played it as my main from then til now (DoDH), doing every raid from PoSky up to Mayong. I can say with complete honesty that the rogue has been interesting but an ultimately disappointing experience. I will grant you that I have no rogue experience from beyond DoDH to Live, so feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt or to educate me on the rogue during those eras, I'm all ears.

That said my understanding (from very limited forum perusal) is that rogues have just now with current expansion finally become the number 1 dps class. My response to that is, so what that's the way it should be in every era. Now I'm not saying rogues should necessarily be the best dps class in the game at all times, but imho they should be the best "melee" dps at all times. From a mechanical class balance point of view there is no reason why rogues should be getting out dpsed by monks and berserkers, none.

Rogue design seems to be one of a "group" class with no utility. Ok fine, I'm cool with a dps class that is 95% reliant on a group much like a cleric. However if that's the case then rogues should be the clerics of dps, by which I mean rogues should be as coveted for groups as clerics are. This can only be accomplished one of two ways. Either we have to give rogues utility to benefit the group, or we say their utility to the group is dps. Now the first route seems like a lot of work so that leaves us with damage.

Fine, so how do we buff rogue damage for groups without making them too strong for solo? Well the only real solution comes from their core class ability: Backstab. Alright let's fix Backstab.

Number 1: Change Chaotic Stabs. Get rid of the whole BS things in the face. Its a stupid mechanic that doesn't make any sense from a Lore perspective. Instead change it to reduce the cool down on BS if you miss the directional. More ranks gives more CD reduction. Where that caps out at whether it be 50% reduction or 100% reduction I couldn't say. I can't do everything and tuning isn't my job its the devs. From this BS should be a high skill high reward kind of playstyle, don't miss your doggone directionals newb =P

Number 2: Backstab sucks. I mean it really sucks, The accuracy miss rate on BS from Classic to OoW is obscene. Now I'm not talking about directional misses, I'm talking standard swing and a miss kind of misses. Adjusting standard hit/miss rate is required. Perhaps that means taking the first 3 ranks of OoW Backstab Precision AAs and baking them into the class from classic, and then adjusting the AA's from there.

Number 3: Did I mention Backstab sucks? The damage range on BS is much too large its probably one of the most frustrating things I've seen in a video game. What I mean for example is in DoDH with my 2.0 for BS, my damage range is something in the neighborhood of 290ish min damage to 1900ish max damage (non crits). This is freaking crazy. Now I have no proof, I can only speak from my feefees, but it feels like things like max str stats / atk power make no difference at all eras, damage on the range just feels complelely random. This needs to be fixed, both the overall range and how often they hit.

With 2 and 3 tuned as needed, tuning era damage can be done by adjusting BS damage on current era daggers. For those saying its too much work, I say whatever, the TLPs are all require paid subscriptions. So the money is coming in from TLPs to put toward balancing them.

Rogues do need help.

I would love to see a rogue poison revamp, it is absolutley atrocious classic with 1 charge per application. Rogue only plus some tradeable like shm potions, so rogue could even make some coin off it. It would boost dps, and also give more utility. Pick a debuff, slow, snare, or reduce hate poison + an appropriate dps poision (either DD or DoT, for each of the types of spells (poison, magic, fire, etc.)). Boom, rogue can do more dps like they are intended to do, and also help the group when needed.

Right now they are the worst dps, with zero utility. Dont need them for corpse runs, and there are like 3 doors in classic-through-forever that need a pick lock which bards can also do.